Alumni Blog: All

On December 24, 1999, a car accident left my life hanging by a thread. My stint in the trauma ICU sparked my interest in medicine. After taking a semester off to recuperate, I returned to UH Mānoa to receive my BA in Biology through the College of Natural Sciences.

Molecular biologist studying blood-feeding arthropods. Mom. Texas transplant.” If you’d shown me this byline 25 years ago, I wouldn’t have imagined it was describing my future self...and it all stems from an application I submitted to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Undergraduate Research Fellowship during my second year as an undergraduate at University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.

I learned how to SCUBA dive at the age of 14, and made my first “open-water” dive in a cold, dark quarry in Ontario, Canada. I think I saw two fish; however, this experience sparked my interest in marine biology, and my desire to study in warmer waters, so I began my college education in Florida with the intention of pursuing a career in marine biology.

I finished high school knowing what I wanted to do as a career. I wanted to pursue dentistry, I just wasn’t sure which route I was going to take to get there. A native Coloradoan, I had always fantasized about the ocean and everything one can think about it; the sun, the fish, surfing, scuba.

In 2005, while I was writing the last bits of my dissertation at UH, a job offer from the Smithsonian arrived in my email inbox. It was an opportunity to continue to do research on invasive marine species, work with some of the top people in the field of invasion biology, and help to develop a laboratory based in the San Fransisco Bay Area.

The opportunity to see many of the animals in their native environment, in addition to dissecting them, was an opportunity that few others around the world would get, and looking back at my time at UH, it is one of the unique opportunities that enhanced my education the most.

There is something incredibly satisfying in helping others achieve their goals whether it be learning how to make a layup in basketball, figuring out the SN1 and SN2 substitution mechanisms of organic chemistry, or gaining admittance to medical school.